A Heavy Interview About Cooking Light

Blogger Bob “Mr. Media” Andelman has done an in-depth interview with Cooking Light editor Mary Kay Culpepper. The title reaches more than 11 million readers, so it’s worth a bit of meditation, which this piece provides in spades. The bad news is that the interview is pretty long, and there’s a fair bit of unalloyed cheerleading. The good news is that it’s pretty long, so it’s possible to glean actual information from it. For example: The satisfyingly exhaustive process that prospective Cooking Light recipes go through before they’re published. It’s the kind of tidbit that is both interesting to read and so arcane that it would probably not make it into a print interview. Three cheers for the Interblogs.

Not surprisingly, Culpepper is a relentless booster of her own publication. But she does address some interesting points, such as the rise of the 500 or so Cooking Light supper clubs, or the ongoing evolution of what the magazine’s title means:

What we have found that’s changed in 20 years has been a real shift in thinking that Cooking Light would represent diet foods, for example, or deprivation.

And in an era when foods are regularly singled out for unhealthy attributes and burned at the stake by the media, it’s actually quite refreshing to hear someone pretty upbeat about food as a whole:

For example, besides having a very clear and ultimately positive message about food itself and not demonizing any particular foodand that’s one rule of thumb that I think has more or less held its way throughout the magazine.